


The Prisoner, The Warden, The Hero, The Mourning

by midnightlie



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Allium, Angst, Dead TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Dead Wilbur Soot, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Insane Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Mild Blood, My fic is no longer true to canon but idc, Prisoner Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Warden Sam | Awesamdude, Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit are Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29855433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightlie/pseuds/midnightlie
Summary: The Prisoner has been there for so long. Staring at that body, that corpse just lying there on the floor. He's growing tired of himself, the way he has driven everyone away and ruined himself in the process.The Warden has made a mistake that he can't come back from. He caused the death of someone he swore to protect, and it's eating him up inside.The Hero is not as much as people expect him to be. He tries his best to do what he can, but in the end he's just a child. He can't change himself just because the world needs him to be something he isn't.The Mourning are not all as innocent as they like to pretend. They lie to themselves and others, using tears of grief to hide tears of guilt.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Sam | Awesamdude, Clay | Dream & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), No Romantic Relationship(s), Sam | Awesamdude & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 5
Kudos: 74





	The Prisoner, The Warden, The Hero, The Mourning

The Prisoner (the monster)

\-------------------------------

The prison was silent. The only sound was the lava bubbling as it poured down the cell wall.

A broken man stared out into the lava, and for a moment the utter insanity of his situation set in. He was trapped, trapped in a prison _he made_. How ridiculous was that? And then he laughed. Just a small burst of something that was not quite joy escaped his parched lips, voice hoarse from yelling. Then another laugh, and another, until he could not stop. Was it a maniacal laugh, the laugh of someone who tossed everyone he loved aside and then blamed his downfall on his biggest victim? Probably. But he couldn’t stop. His laughter consumed him, erasing his guilt over what he had just done. 

Heaving in a deep breath as the laughter finally stopped, the Prisoner glanced down at the body of his former cellmate.

His victim.

_A child._

Bile crawled up the back of his throat at the thought of what he had done. He had _beaten a child to death._ That was something only the worst of the worst would do. Something only those who had lost their way a long time ago would do. Someone like him. A burst of anger shot through him at the sight of the child, his body broken beyond repair; neck bent at the wrong angle.

_Dead._

His vision filled with red, ( _red like the blood that coated the prison floor)_ and _screamed._ and he pulled that stupid porcelain mask off his scarred, ruined face and threw it violently against the void-like obsidian walls of his cell.

It split into an even two pieces, because _of course_ it did. Everything was always _perfect_ with him, wasn’t it? Even in this fucking cell, even his fucking smile mask and everything it represented. He crumpled to the floor, feeling completely and utterly broken. He locked eyes with the childish smile painted into the mask. It had cracked near the centre, with an even split separating the right eye from the rest of the mask. A sob wracked his body and his head fell into his hands, heavy with guilt. Was he sorry he did it? Did he regret hurting all those people? Honestly, he didn’t know. Probably not. 

He sat there for a while, mourning the death of a 16 year old.

A death he caused. 

His body just lay there. Blood still trickled gently out of some of the wounds across his body. His blond hair was matted with grime from the prison and blood from the fight. His blue eyes- ( _were they always that dull when he was alive? Or was that another thing that had been stolen from him, along with his childhood, his freedom, his_ life _._ ) -stared at the dark walls with an empty gaze. It felt so _wrong_ seeing him like that, all quiet and empty. But the Prisoner liked it. Things were finally calm.

_The hero was finally silent._

The Warden (the villain)

\-------------------------------

The Warden had failed the child. He had allowed the monster that was his prisoner to get his claws on the child he’d sworn to protect. Now they were stuck together, in a room he had designed to be inescapable. Last time the monster had been left alone with the child, he had returned with the colour missing from his eyes and a strange draw to lava that no one could explain.

It was happening again but worse, because the monster had nothing to lose and the child had lost his nerve. 

_(Should he really still be called a child, after all he’s been through?)_

The Warden should’ve known something was wrong when he heard the child call his name. When he heard the raw, guttural screams of anguish that rattled the prison walls. Every day that the child spent trapped in that tiny box with the monster, the more the soul of the prison blackened. The air grew heavier, the echoes of a child in pain still audible if you strained your ears. He should’ve done something, anything, just to help the poor boy he had locked in there. 

But there was nothing to be done (or so he told himself, repeating the words under his breath every day to drown out the yells that came from behind the wall of lava between him and the cell.) Protocol is protocol, and so he followed it regardless of how wrong it felt, regardless of the way his heart ached every time he turned his back on the poor child. _Soon_ , he promised himself. _Soon it will be over and I will see my boy again_.

He was a liar.

_And maybe he was more of a villain than he thought._

The Hero (the child)

\-------------------------------

The Hero wasa scared. He hated saying it, thinking it, but it’s true; the almighty, unkillable hero was afraid. He was trapped with the monster he’d once been tricked into calling a friend. He woke up every day to see the monster staring at him from behind his awful mask, sharpening his claws, preparing for something he dreaded to think about. _Waiting_. 

The Hero was afraid of the way the monster towered over him when he was asleep, always watching; always waiting. The Hero hated the way the monster made him flinch. He hated the way he wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear every time the monster raised his voice. 

The Hero was sick. He was sick of the taste of raw potatoes, the way they clumped up in his mouth and felt weird on his tongue. He was sick of the way the monster treated him, he was sick of the way people acted as though he would shatter at the slightest word. ( _He hated the way they were right._ ) He hated the way that to try and help himself he built an edge of sass that crossed the line between bravery and stupidity a long time ago. He was sick of hearing the voice of the villain that got him stuck there in the first place, promising him that he would get out soon and that there was no reason to worry, he just had to hold on a little longer.

_But what if he couldn’t?_

The Hero was sick in the head. He didn’t know how long he’d been stuck in this god-forsaken box where no light other than the tempting orange glow from the lava could reach and walls that closed in when you weren’t looking. He heard voices, whispers that came from the darkest corners of the cell. 

Some told him no one cared. He believed those voices.

Some voices enticed him into the lava, murmuring into his ear about how warm it would be, a relief from the freezing obsidian floor. Those voices were the hardest to resist.

Some voices told him to kill the monster. To shove him into the lava that formed the final wall of his cell, to break off a piece of furniture and stab him with it. Sometimes that was more tempting than the lava.

So when the day finally came where the Hero pushed too far and the monster snapped, he was grateful. When the monster pushed him too far; punched him one too many times and his body broke; he was happy

As his body crashed to the floor, white light flooding his vision and a ringing sound filling his ears, he finally felt free. He saw a dark figure shaped like a brother he lost to war, he gratefully departed the world of the living. Crashing into his arms, holding him tight, he felt something he hadn’t felt since he’d lost his brother to insanity: loved.

_Maybe he was more of a child than he pretended to be._

The Mourning (the guilty)

\-------------------------------

The Mourning were silent the day they found out what became of the child. The child they’d taken in, the child they’d loved, the child they’d named a hero and forced to become one even though his nature was against it. They cried together, murmuring words of comfort to those who had been closer to him than they were. 

They gave speeches talking about how they loved him, about how they missed him, about how they had failed him. They handed out flowers, giving gifts that supposedly brought them together over their collective loss. But in their hearts they knew they were not innocent as they pretended. They were not the friends who lost someone close to them and were then crippled by grief. No, for even though they may not have been the cause of his death, the Mourning were guilty.

The child they were mourning was not one many of them would call a friend. Maybe at first, but not anymore. Everyone he had loved had either died or realised they valued their ambitions over him. He died utterly alone, with the idea of death a comfort rather than something to fear. The Mourning, ( _or rather, the guilty_ ,) knew this, but to keep their fragile minds at peace, they lied to themselves. _It wasn’t our fault,_ they reasoned, _we didn’t snap his neck, we didn’t break his body until he could no longer stand._ It may have been true, but it didn’t make them innocent.

_And they knew it._

Maybe They Aren’t So Different After All (maybe we were more similar than we thought)

\-------------------------------

Sometimes those who mourn are also those who are the most guilty. People often use a shield of grief to hide from the fact that they feel responsible for what has happened. This applies here, where the Mourning are more the Guilty. They cry in shame and tell others it is from sadness.

Sometimes those called a Hero are nothing but a child in a costume. Sometimes they are nothing but a person people use to blame for the things they caused. A Hero isn’t always a morally-superior character who can never do wrong; a Hero is someone who has just as many flaws as the rest of us but chooses to push them aside and be better. Maybe the Hero was a child, but that didn’t make him any less of a hero.

Sometimes the Warden can be the villain. Sometimes the one who is supposed to lock the monsters away becomes one himself, even if he didn’t intend to. The Warden might have tried his best to keep the Hero safe from his Prisoner but he failed. It’s not easy defying what has been decided by those who are stronger than you, even if it appears that you have power over them right now. And the Warden failed at that. He became the thing he despised, he became the Villain.

Most of the time the Prisoner is more than just that. Sometimes he is more a monster than a person, someone who has been trapped inside his own head longer than he’d been trapped inside the cell. Most of the time the Prisoner is actually a terrible, terrible person, someone who has committed crimes too awful to remain outside. But this wasn’t always true. Sometimes, as much as a monster they may seem, the Prisoner has many facets. You can never truly understand his motives, so the best thing to do is just take the easy stand of ‘everything he does is terrible’.

\-------------------------------

Somewhere on the edge of the universe, in a place where life and death hold hands and dare you to cross the line, there is a boy. A boy who had many names, _the child_ , _the Hero_. But here he was nothing but dead. And he was ok with that, if he was being perfectly honest with himself. Here he could be with the one person who truly cared about him until he lost his way. Here he could be with the person he loved with his whole heart, something he was unable to say about anyone who was still alive.

As the two of them sat there, dangling their feet into the void of death, the boy heard something. A small pop, the sound you would expect to hear when your ears pop. The boy looked over his shoulder to see a bright purple flower with many fluffy petals forming a ring around the top of the stem. An allium.

‘Maybe things will be alright after all,’ he whispered to himself.

_Maybe they do care_.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed :] This is my first fic and it's in a style I've never written in before, but it was fun! Honestly it was strange not writing any dialogue but I enjoyed it.
> 
> Feel free to follow my [twitter](https://twitter.com/coolerranboo) ahaha I tweet a lot but will update about any fics I have in progress


End file.
